Dems eye stimulus to pay teachers

Crossing a line they had hoped to avoid, Democrats are actively discussing cuts from White House priorities in last year’s Recovery Act in order to come up with $10 billion to avert threatened layoffs of public school teachers next fall.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) outlined the options in a memo to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday, and while no details were released, President Barack Obama’s long-term investment agenda would almost certainly be affected.

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The shift reflects the dramatically changed political climate, making it harder for Democrats to pursue spending initiatives and encouraging a new level of stealth and backbiting between lawmakers and the administration.

It’s not yet a jihad, but in recent weeks, there’s been more than a little Afghan-style tribalism on display in the struggle over a must-pass war funding bill at the center of the teacher controversy. Obey has been sorely frustrated by the White House’s mixed signals in support of Education Secretary Arne Duncan on the teachers’ issue. By going after unspent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funds, he is implicitly challenging the White House to come forward more and offer alternatives.

At the same time, the administration would prefer to roll over the chairman and has gone so far as to hold back a sensitive border-security spending request in hopes of greasing the way for the House to accept a Senate-passed version of the same war funding bill.

The Senate bill was already moving through the floor when Obama announced May 25 that he was ordering more National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and would be seeking $500 million more for security. More than two weeks later, no request has come, and Democrats say this is part of a strategy to hold back the papers and make it easier for the House to take the Senate bill — without the $500 million.

There seems little chance of that. But watching nervously is the Pentagon, which has major offensives planned in southern Afghanistan this summer and has $33.1 billion riding in the war bill, which Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants enacted by July 4.

Even more frustrated are House Republicans, whose support will be needed for the war funding and are angry at being cut out of the process.

In a letter to Obey on Thursday, Republicans on the Appropriations panel asked again that he follow the path of the Senate, which held a full markup before floor debate on its $58.9 billion version of the same bill.

“On April 26, Appropriations Republicans wrote you respectfully requesting that you schedule a full committee markup of a clean emergency supplemental troop funding bill and allow this critical legislation to be considered through the traditional regular order process on the House floor,” the letter reads. “Instead, the full committee markup of the emergency supplemental that was scheduled for May 27 was postponed at the last minute without explanation.”

“We have since learned that your staff has been instructed to begin negotiating with the Senate majority staff on a supplemental spending package using the House Committee print and the Senate-passed supplemental to guide the negotiating process. To say the least, it is highly unusual to begin Democrat-only negotiations with the Senate using a House bill that not only was never considered by the full House; it was not even considered by the Appropriations Committee.”